German Olympians’ Experiences of Competing at the 2004 Athens Games

The purpose of the present study was to provide a detailed description of German Olympians’ experience of competing at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. In-depth, open-ended phenomenological interviews were conducted with twelve German athletes who competed in Athens. The athletes represented various sports but in order to keep their identity confidential their names were not disclosed. The interviews, originally in German, were transcribed and served as the primary source for data analysis. In a cross-cultural setting where some of the interviews were translated into English, a method informed by hermeneutic analysis was used to derive a thematic structure of the research participants’ experiences. Four grounds emerged from the analysis of the athletes’ experience: 1) Time, 2) The Preparation, 3) The Olympics, and 4) The Overall Result. Time provided a context for all other aspects of the athletes’ experience of competing in Athens. The athletes first had to prepare for the competition (The Preparation, which included the sub themes of Training and Making the Team), and then subsequently competed in The Olympics. The ground of The Olympics reflected the athletes’ experiences of dealing with Distractions, The Olympic Village, and the fact that The Whole World is Watching. Finally, the athletes obtained a certain result (The Overall Result), which in many ways influenced how they perceived their overall Olympic experience. Three figural themes stood out in the context of the four grounds: 1) The Competitor / Self, 2) Others, and 3) The Competition / Event. Athletes talked about the sub themes of Body, Emotions / Feelings, Staying Focused, and Identity / Personality when discussing the theme The Competitor / Self. Support and The Team were the two sub themes that emerged for the figural theme of Others. When discussing the theme of The Competition / Event, participants talked about The Sport, The Setting / Site, and Opponents. Overall, the findings suggested that while there were considerable individual differences in participants’ experiences most of these athletes lacked systematic mental preparation for the 2004 Athens Olympics and also experienced various forms of organizational stress

QFN-packaged highly-linear cascode GaN LNA MMIC from 0.5 to 3 GHz

A GaN high electron mobility transistor technology with a gate length of 0.25 μm has been used to design and fabricate a cascode broadband low noise amplifier (LNA). The two-stage monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) with feedback topology yields a bandwidth of 0.5-3 GHz at a constant gain of 35 dB and noise figures of less than 1.5 dB. A third order intercept point (OIP3) of up to 42.5 dBm was measured at 0.8 GHz, with a linear output power of 24 dBm over the full bandwidth. The MMIC was further assembled and measured in a low-cost plastic QFN package on an evaluation board with optimized thermal design and passive cooling. At a power dissipation of ~3 W the packaged LNA yields an OIP3 of 35-38 dBm over the full bandwidth at a noise figure of <; 1.9 dB

Development of a Numerical Model of the Hot Air Staking Process Based on Experimental Data

Intelligent light weight concepts are increasingly designed as multi-material systems in order to achieve optimized properties through a targeted combination of materials. For these applications, the market demands joining technologies that make it possible to join foreign materials reliably (e.g., incompatible thermoplastics, thermoplastic-metal and thermoplastic-thermoset). In view of these industrial challenges, thermoplastic staking is an established forming process. At present, computer-aided development and precise FE-simulation (finite element-simulation) of these processes are not state-of-the-art. Accordingly, the previous design is based on subjective empirical values and empirical tests of the component. Within the framework of the paper, these gaps are to be closed by the development of numerical models for the heating and forming behavior of thermal plastic rivets (hot air staking) and the associated experimental validation. This requires the experimental development of the cause-effect relationships between melt formation and the resulting forming behavior. Finally, the numerical simulation shows a high conformity to the experimental data and allows an evaluation of the minimum heating time as well as initial approaches to evaluating the resulting structures by the simulation

High-power-density AlGaN/GaN technology for 100-V operation at L-band frequencies

In this paper we report on the development of a 0.50 µm AlGaN/GaN on SiC technology optimized for 100-V operation. Load pull measurements reveal a power density of more than 17 W/mm and a power-added efficiency of 77.3 % at a frequency of 1.0 GHz and a drain supply voltage of 100 V. Experimental data at 125 V even shows a power density in excess of 20 W/mm. To the authors’ knowledge, the demonstrated PAE of 77.3 % is the highest ever reported in Lband for 100-V operation

Deep submicron III-N HEMTs - technological development and reliability

This paper gives the state-of-the-art (SOA) of the technological development and the reliability status of deepsubmicron Gallium Nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) with gate lengths of 100 nm or below. Several process technologies are discussed and epitaxial, process options, and reliability are compared. Promising GaN MMIC device results are also provided leading to improved GaN G-band operation at frequencies near 200 GHz

The Santo Andre lagoon at the Atlantic coast of Portugal - Holocene evolution and event history

The Santo Andre lagoon is located on the southern west coast of Portugal, about 80 km south of Lisbon. Although the beach barrier separating the lagoon from the open sea was occasionally breached in the past and has artificially been opened on an annual basis for the last decades, the lagoon still represents an appropriate geo-bioarchive for reconstructing the Holocene palaeoenvironmental evolution. For this purpose, a 10-m-long sediment core was taken from the centre of the lagoon by using a floating platform. Sedimentological, geochemical and micropalaeontological analyses were performed in order to unravel past sedimentological, environmental and climatic conditions. Due to the lagoon's exposure to storms from the Atlantic and possible tsunamis triggered by earthquakes along the Eurasian-African plate boundary south of Portugal, it is of high interest to identify short-term high energy events that might have crossed or breached the shielding barrier, leaving their footprint in the sedimentary record of the lagoon. The sediment core archived the palaeoenvironmental evolution of the Santo Andre lagoon for at least the last eight millennia. The sandy deposits of the core's lowermost part most likely represent a former coastal flood plain that developed when the postglacial marine transgression had reached the area. The continued sea-level rise deposited alternating layers which indicate varying environmental conditions, characterized by peat growth, stagnant-water areas, as well as disconnections from and reconnections with the open sea. Since approximately 5000 BP, the longshore transport had formed a beach barrier, separating the marine embayment from the open sea and creating a lagoon. In addition, four sudden significant marine inundations between similar to 8500 and 6000 BP are indicated by the sedimentary and microfaunal analyses. Two of these layers can be correlated to extreme wave events (unit B-II), while for the other two layers an ingression caused by sea-level rise or extreme wave events remains debatable